The Paths of the Living
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: Struggling to survive after the fall of Atlanta, Scarlett saw Charles Hamilton again. But he wasn't the one she wanted to see...


_A/N: Written for a Hallowe'en challenge._

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><p><strong>The Paths of the Living<strong>

October 31st, 1864

There were no boys left in the South.

Of all the things that were so wrong — so very wrong — about that moment on All Hallows' Eve when Charles Hamilton came again to her, standing hesitant in the doorway, somehow it was that thought which caught first in Scarlett's weary mind.

There were no boys left in the South any more; only old men of sixteen or seventeen, grey-faced and haggard as the Cause that had drained the youth of a nation. And she herself was no longer the child she'd been when he'd married her. That pretty, heartless kitten was gone, and a scrawny half-starved creature stalked in her place, glaring through cat-green eyes. But Charles at twenty was still a boy, as unformed and innocent as the day he had left her... and as unchanged.

If she had been asked that morning to bring his face to mind, though, she did not think she could have done it. She had long since forgotten her husband of a week, her suitor of two weeks, and if ever she glimpsed him in little Wade Hampton it was only with irritation.

She did not know what had made her look up from her needle in the flickering light that made her eyes ache, for all that she was driving ragged stitches through sackcloth and not fine embroidery by the fire. The darkies were in bed, the sick girls were asleep, and she could have sworn she'd heard no sound.

It must have been some sixth sense that brought her head up from her mending to see him, so impossibly young in his fever-damp shirt with the flush of it still on his cheeks... and hovering thus on the threshold he was so very much Charles that it never occurred to her to doubt him, though he could not have been there.

For he was dead, of course. Somehow it never occurred to her to doubt that either. He'd left that sick-bed for the grave three years back... and hadn't Gerald O'Hara told his small girls time and time again the tales of the old country, of how the dead walk the paths of the living this one night?

Charles knew it too, Scarlett thought, in the strange numb acceptance that seemed to have come over her — or at least he suspected it. His great brown eyes held the same lost, frightened look she had seen so often in Wade; and it was more than just shyness that sent his gaze roaming away from her face across the changed, threadbare walls of Tara.

"I—" He abandoned his clutch on the door-jamb and came haltingly towards her, as if every step across the wide room was an effort of will. "I shouldn't be here, I think. I— I think I was dreaming. There's some mistake. Scarlett, it's a dream, isn't it?"

But there was a sharp bead of pain in her hand that was no dream, where the needle had drawn blood unheeded, and the firelight threw living shadows across his shirt as he came closer. Scarlett waited to see him grow transparent and vanish; waited for the chill of fear that must surely arrive. All she could find in herself was frustration at one more burden laden onto her shoulders... for what was this but another unasked responsibility, another helpless waverer come to cling onto her skirts now that her mother was dead?

_Why me?_ she flung at him silently. _Why not Melanie? She loved you. I never did. Why do you have to come to me?_

But Melanie upstairs was cold and white and maybe on her own road to the grave, and she, Scarlett, had all the strength of her own furious will — the strength that drove the others in the thankless battle to hold Tara together — and there was no ghostly menace in the Charles who waited before her now; only the answer to her question laid bare in his eyes. Only the unwanted, trusting ardour that had brought him here to her on this night out of whatever far place he had been wandering.

He mustn't find out. Some deep instinct told her that, and she let fall her sewing, unconsciously squaring her shoulders. Whatever he saw when he looked at her, it wasn't the bitter, ragged creature she had become; and for her own sake, for the sake of Tara's future, this thing out of her past must not be allowed to understand what those years had done to her and to the place she loved. Nothing but ill could come of it.

Scarlett sprang to her feet in decision, holding out a hand to take the uncertain grasp Charles had put out towards her. She could manage men, couldn't she? She'd certainly been able to handle this husband of hers; why, he wouldn't have _been_ her husband if she hadn't put it into his mooncalf head for him. Why should he be any different... now?

Her heart quailed a moment at that final reflection, and she steeled herself for clammy chill at his touch... or worse, the instant when his outstretched hand would meet hers — and slide on through with spectral ease, like some headless haunt that walked through walls. Without knowing it, she had shut her eyes.

But the grip that found hers was hot and a little damp, clinging with a feverish intensity that threatened to crush her fingers, and she tugged loose with all the old familiar irritation. "Goodness' sake, Charles, don't squeeze so hard — I guess a man never knows his own strength."

Call this a man? She found herself measuring him against Rhett Butler's broad shoulders — no, Ashley's lithe build — with contempt she could scarcely hide: but the touch of flattery worked its old trick, and when she gave him her hand again it was a boy's confiding clasp that closed around it in answer and not that panic-stricken clutch.

"Scarlett..." It was barely a breath. "You're here."

"Of course I'm here." She bit back words with an effort, pulling him over towards the old couch with its war-worn covers; never had she been so grateful for the flickering light. Beneath the flush in his cheeks he was pale, and she wondered that he could still stand. What would happen if he passed out? _Could_ the dead pass out — or would he just vanish again as if he'd never been? Hope sprang within her at the idea.

She tried to remember what endearments she'd found for him during their brief marriage. Had she ever used any? She really couldn't recall.

"Dear"—that had to be safe—"you need to lie down. You've been ill. There's been some kind of mistake. We'll get you back where you belong. Just... just lie down here — that's right—"

She piled cushions behind his head and brushed back tumbling curls — cropped closer now than when she'd last seen him — from his brow. "That's right. It was a dream. Be sure and lie quiet, now, and it'll all be right in the morning."

"Don't — don't go." He caught at her fingers where her wedding ring should have been, and she pulled away sharply, afraid he would detect the absence. That heavy gold band had gone long since into Confederate coffers, one more heroic sacrifice... like that of her new-wedded groom. And if she'd had a choice, Scarlett thought bitterly, shocking even herself, if one of the two were to come back to her like this, she would rather it had been the gold.

"Don't go," Charles pleaded again, trying to sit up, and she coaxed him down again with hard-won patience.

"Where would I go, you silly thing? I'm sitting right here — see? I'll be with you all along... close your eyes, now, take some rest..."

She leaned forward and kissed him lightly with an odd superstitious shrinking, and saw with relief how the heavy lids began to drift downward again, reassured, as she drew back. His lips had parted slightly on a long indrawn breath; they curved upwards now in a smile that echoed the glimpse of unshadowed adoration in his face, and Scarlett turned away, feeling bile burn at the back of her throat.

Whatever he saw when he looked at her that way, it wasn't her. It had never been her. It couldn't be her, not now, not if Tara were to survive. And he was a poor weak thing for believing in it...

The fire was burning low, and there was no point in wasting more cordwood. Scarlett picked up her sewing again impatiently, set a few more crooked stitches more by feel than by sight, and let the work drop to her lap as she glanced across at Charles.

If he was still here in the morning — if this crazy night of ghosts had inflicted an honest-to-God miracle on her — then by all that was holy, she swore she'd scream aloud. The dead belonged dead, and there was no getting away from it. And if she had to feed another useless mouth, she thought she would just about choke.

He'd talked loud enough, to start with, about mistakes and how he shouldn't be here. It would be just like Charles Hamilton, Scarlett thought, to cling on where he wasn't wanted...

The long lashes were lying quiet now on his cheeks and he looked younger than ever in the firelight. He might have been an echo of all those hopeful boys who'd gone off to war, in quest of a cause that vanished like smoke between the fingers of those who grasped for it.

Her heart turned over oddly, bitterness forgotten, and she reached out on impulse to touch his hand. But between one moment and another an ember flared in the fireplace and he was gone; gone like the flame as it winked out. Gone over the border back into sleep, and whatever fever dream had gone awry on All Saints' Night to bring him here.

Scarlett froze, hand still outstretched, and for the first time felt a helpless chill at her back. It was as if she hadn't really believed — until now.

Then the piled cushions slipped downwards in almost soundless witness, lying tumbled across an empty couch. The covers still held the faint hollow where her husband had lain, and she stared at the shadowed imprint that was a testament to the impossible.

Impossible? She bit her lip abruptly, fighting back tears. And wasn't their whole situation here at Tara impossible? Wasn't it enough that she must slave like a field-hand, scrub and mend and nurse till her back ached and her fingers split, bully and scold and drive until she became hateful even to herself, to keep them all from starving?

The one thing — the one impossible thing — she would have given the world to have back was her mother's calm voice and strength to share this unbearable load; her mother's arms to hold her and her mother's love in which to hide. But Ellen was dead, dead and gone, calling after lost Philippe into a darkness from before her daughter had ever been born. Scarlett had armoured herself against that loss in the knowledge that she had no choice.

Now she knew in one piercing moment that there had been a choice: that the dead could come to seek comfort from the living.

The warning instinct to keep the past from knowledge of the present was forgotten. Impatience and haste and fear were forgotten. Scarlett knew only that a door had opened, that she had been crying out for unconditional love and it had not been Ellen who came.

She dropped to her knees in the fire's last glow, burying her face in the empty couch and beating on it with her hands in a paroxysm of weeping as if Charles had still been there. How dared he — how dared he come to her so? How dared Mother leave her alone when she needed her so much?

The first fury passed, and she lay sobbing in the dark. Charles had cradled her once with awkward caresses and clumsy comfort, helpless to understand. But Tara's halls were empty around her now on All Hallows' Night and she knew somehow that this time would not come again.

The door had closed, and the dead could do nothing to aid her. There was no-one to help her bear this yoke: no shoulder for exhausted tears. She had not even the warmth of contempt for Charles and his blind devotion.

_Oh Mother, Mother—_

Chilled and alone in the parlour, Scarlett drifted into a huddled sleep, her eyelashes still wet. When the morning's stiff reckoning came, she would tell herself she had nodded off over her mending.

Soon enough she would even believe it. Gerald's tales had been for children, after all. And the alternative... did not bear remembering.


End file.
